Dietlind Stolle is a Professor of Political Science at McGill University. Her research looks at political mobilization, participation and knowledge, as well as social capital, ethnic and racial prejudice, and the consequences of ethnic diversity. She is also a Principal Investigator of the Canadian Election Study. Professor Stolle's projects include quantitative research looking into youth mobilization and participation on Facebook, the role of pregnancy on political behaviour, the impact of religious diversity in 11 different countries, and attitudes towards refugees in Germany. She is also the Director of the Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship.

Axis 2: Practicing Citizenship in a Skeptical World - The practice of democratic citizenship is undergoing a multifaceted transition. There are fundamental changes in conceptions of democratic citizenship and in its practice as well as the targets of citizen action. Scepticism about representative democracy as a system of governance is growing and citizens across established democracies are withdrawing from politics. Their perception about the political world is impacted by transformations in the news media practices and by online content, including social media. Voting and party politics have been the basis of conventional interpretations of citizenship, but there is ample evidence that this conception is much too limited. New forms of communication are providing citizens with novel ways to gather information and to engage in politics.

Axis 3: Representing and Governing Citizens in Critical Times - After learning and practicing democratic citizenship, the next critical steps are representation and governance. Democratic institutions are key elements. They shape the norms and incentives for active citizenship and they link citizens and their representatives in ways that foster accountability, legitimacy and representation. In Québec and Canada, as well as in other countries, confidence of citizens toward the institutions is low, as many dislike the way that members of parliaments behave and consider that politicians dont honour their promises, hence various political endeavours to reform these institutions. Research on this axis will focus on the role of electoral systems, parliaments, parliamentary debates, and political parties.

Aengus Bridgman, PhD(Start: 2016)Aengus' work draws upon social psychology which offer well-substantiated models for how individuals develop identities, those identities cohere and then how those identities are politicized. The persuasive lab-based demonstrations they provide, however, often lack contact with real-world politics. In a lab experiment minimal groups are induced by the researcher, perhaps small tokens are distributed to indicate relative advantage, and simple behaviours are measured. In the political world, however, who does that inducing? What comparisons are made? And how are political behaviour repertoires selected? I explore the roles of environment and political leadership in politicizing social psychological processes. I look at new and emergent politically salient identities: male, millennial, and environmentalist. I study these phenomena in Canada and other mature democracies. Methodologically, I work with survey, census, and textual data and have a secondary interest in machine learning, natural language processing and computational social science more generally.

Colin Scott, PhD(Start: 2015)I am a PhD candidate with the Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship at McGill University in Montreal Canada. My primary research interests examine prejudice, discrimination, and the integration and participation of immigrants and other cultural minorities in society. I draw on research at the intersection of social, political, and cross-cultural psychology to design and evaluate prejudice-reduction intervention with a particular interest in experimental methods. I also have a strong interest in program evaluation and community-based research; I have partnered with non-profit and other social service providers in Canada and Central America.

Denver McNeney, PhD(Start: 2011)Denver McNeney's work builds upon Zaller's (1992) reception-acceptance axiom to examine how political sophistication interacts with partisanship to shape voters' responses to and perception of political life. Using data from the 1988, 2006, and 2008 Canadian federal elections and the 2000 and 2008 U.S. Presidential elections, this work identifies four kinds of voters that respond to political life in distinct ways: the minimal effects of highly sophisticated, highly partisan voters; the learning dynamics of highly partisan, low sophistication voters; the priming effects of less partisan but highly sophisticated voters; and the simple retrospective reward and punish models of less partisan, low sophistication voters driven by myopic and ephemeral considerations.

Olivier Jacques, PhD(Start: 2015)My dissertation focus on the political economy of fiscal choices in developed economies. I conceive budgets as a trilemma between taxes, investment in the future and current consumption. I verify if governments have a short-term bias and prioritize lower taxes and higher curent consumption over long-term investment. I investigate the conditions incentivizing governments to choose future-oriented investment and the partisan preferences regarding taxes, social consumption and investment. Finally, my dissertation analyze the distributional consequence of fiscal choices within Canadian provinces.
My other projects include research on Canadian politics, notably on interprovincial social policy differences, the Canadian welfare state and its relationship with tax policies. Also, I do cross national research on the impact of welfare states' design and income redistribution.

Journal: Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science

Volume: 611

issue: 1

Year: 2007

First Page: 157

Last Page: 175

An Institutional Theory of Social Capital

Journal: Social Capital-A Reader

Year: 2008

First Page: 273

Last Page: 302

Swedish Political Consumers: Who they are and why they use the Market as an Arena for Politics

Journal: Political Consumerism: Its Motivations, Power, and Conditions in the Nordic Countries and Elsewhere, Proceedings from the 2nd International Seminar on Political Consumerism, Oslo August 26-29, 2005

Year: 2005

First Page: 145

Last Page: 164

Place: Oslo

A Case of Discursive Political Consumerism: The Nike e-mail exchange

Journal: Political Consumerism: Its Motivations, Power, and Conditions in the Nordic Countries and Elsewhere, Proceedings from the 2nd International Seminar on Political Consumerism, Oslo August 26-29, 2005

Year: 2005

First Page: 255

Last Page: 290

Place: Oslo

Fashioning Social Justice through Political Consumerism, Capitalism, and the Internet

Journal: Cultural Studies

Volume: 22

issue: 5

Year: 2008

First Page: 749

Last Page: 769

Social Networks and Immigrant Women's Political Incorporation

Journal: INSNA XXVII International Social Network Conference

Year: 2007

The State and Social Capital: An Institutional Theory of Generalized Trust

Journal: Comparative Politics

Volume: 40

issue: 4

Year: 2008

First Page: 441

Last Page: 467

Why can't a Student be more like an Average Person? Sampling and Attrition Effects in Social Science Field and Laboratory Experiments

Journal: Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science

Volume: 628

issue: 1

Year: 2010

First Page: 85

Last Page: 96

The Role of Social Networks in Immigrant Women's Political Incorporation

Journal: International Migration Review

Volume: 43

issue: 4

Year: 2009

First Page: 727

Last Page: 763

The Political Socialization of Young People in Canada: Is There a Differential Effect of Citizenship Education on Visible Minorities?